Impractical Jokers: [Joker]xReader Collection

Joe x Reader - The Possessive Type

[SMUT WARNING. READ AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION.]

He's had to watch you laugh at Q's jokes for the past few hours now. Eyes fixed on the pair of you walking arm in arm (Brian insisting he was being 'chivalrous' through town as you walked), he feels his insides coiling at the thought of you preferring his company, longing for his presence as opposed to his own.

Joe runs a palm over his face, leans against the wall in the back room and sighs. He's a grown man, yet he feels as possessive as a schoolboy with a first crush.

He's lightly startled out of his brooding when he feels your hand on his shoulder, you coming to lean against him with that playful smile he's come to love shaping your jaw in such a way that makes him want to lean down and run his lips along it. The image fills his head, fingers twitching by his side as he contemplates grabbing you and doing it right then and there... but he has more control than that, has to have more control than that.

"Hey!" You greet happily, eyes catching his, making him swallow thickly. He's annoyed with you yet he has no right to be. You're allowed to talk to Q, allowed to prefer him if you so wish - what could he really offer you anyway? - but it just frustrates him, burns him from the inside out. He finds that looking at you makes his brow form a crease and, before he can rectify it, you have caught on. "Are... you okay...?"

"Fine," Joe replies, a little too quickly for you to accept it. Besides, you know him better than that, can see how tense his jaw is as he turns his head to you and opens his mouth as if to speak, only to be interrupted by Q, Murr and Sal tumbling into the room, seemingly back from their three-way task (a new format they'd been trying out, whether one could out-do the other three; if they could, that Joker was safe from a punishment).

Whatever Joe was going to say is silenced by the people in the room, lips meeting one another firmly and you know there's no getting through to him now. With a light shrug, you move to join Q once more.

It's a few more hours before Gatto gets you alone once more and when Q, Sal, Murr and the pair of you part ways he couldn't have been happier. Hitching a ride with him, Joe drives in relative silence. It's eerie, the fact that he's not singing or dancing and the radio remains untouched, all of it makes you feel off. And his hard stare isn't helping either, the blue of his eyes that you've come to adore so fixated on the road ahead of him, stormy and unsettled.

Suddenly, you stick your arm out and knock his hands on the steering wheel, throwing a sharp right before he slams his foot on the brake. You end up on the side of a dark road, the pair of you having taken a short-cut back to his street rather than travelling down the main highway.

"[Y/N]!" he yells, eyes widened and his hands now so tight around the wheel his knuckles have turned white. "What the hell?!"

Raising a finger, you jab it into his chest. "You're gonna tell me what's going on. Now."

"I don't know what you're--"

"Oh come off it. You've been grumpy and tight-lipped all day, and you were definitely gonna tell me something earlier but you stopped when the other guys came in. So tell me. Don't make me say it twice, Joseph Gatto."

Your lips have formed a perfect pout as arms fold neatly over your chest, the use of his full name making his brow dip.

"It's nothin'," he repeats, though his tone shakes and teeters on the edge of a whisper. "Just havin' an off day."

"Tch, yeah. Ever since I started hanging out with Q earlier, you--" And suddenly it clicks. Everything comes together at such an alarming rate that you're all but winded in the seat you sit in. A sly smirk forms on your face as the finger prodding his chest digs in a little, teasingly. "...you're not jealous." You utter, disbelief forming on your features as Joe turns his head away and refuses to look at you. "...you are! Oh my God!"